The 3rd Refresher Course 2014 on Media Studies and Governance started today on 10th January and will continue till 31st January 2015.

The Inaugural Session/10 January 2015

The inaugural session of the 3rd Refresher Course on Media and Governance was held on 10th of January 2015 in the yellow hall of UGC-Academic Staff College, Jamia Millia Islamia(ASC-JMI) premises. The anchor of the inaugural session was Dr. Azra Khursid of ASC-JMI.

Prof Mujtaba Khan, Director of ASC-JMI gave the formal welcome address for the 3rd RC. In his address he highlighted the fact that other universities do not have RC s on Media and Governance and that this course is going to be one of the permanent courses in the ASC-JMI for the coming years. He briefly recounted the rich lineage of Jamia Millia Islamia for the knowledge of the participants. He then also gave a brief history of the Academic Staff College which was established in 1987. He observed that the values that the founding fathers had given to India are slowly getting eroded and he iterated that the academic community can deter this abrasion and pass those values to the future generation. He stressed on the importance of the freedom of expression and freedom of thought for the academic community. He stressed that media plays an important role in the society and has both good and bad effects.

After the welcome address by Prof Khan the participants of the 3rd RC introduced themselves. Then the chief guest for the inaugural session, Mr. Shankar Mohan, Director, Directorate of Film Festivals, India took the dais to address the gathering. He talked about the developments in the media itself he also described the power of the media in building and destroying nations. He also said that media wants to expand itself and also in different directions. He also discussed about the freedom of expression that pervades in the working of the media. That media also uses it and misuses it. He recounted his experiences as a Festival Director of India International Film Festival his interactions with the media. For him Media has the power to unite and divide. He talked about the role of an individual in the profession of media and his or her role in generating a clear message and how to use that freedom of expression. In his expression he found that there were certain differences the way Indian media and media from abroad covered film festivals both in India and abroad.

After the speech by the chief guest, Director of Center for Culture, Media and Governance, Prof Biswajit Das, addressed the gathering. He expressed that Interdisciplinarity is thought in a narrow compartmentalized way when it comes to communication. Discussions on media are based on medium access and media media society access. Communication was there since time immemorial but theorizing on it has been a recent phenomenon. He gave the idea of the heavy and light media recounting Herodonus. He made a point that communications are to be recasted in this new era where newer and newer mediums are emerging. The understanding of the discipline has been horizontal rather than vertical. The essence of the Interdisciplinarity is to pose questions and contestations from different disciplines to understand media and communications.

The conventional concept of communications starts from industrial revolution. Communication has been conventionally defined as transmission of ideas and transportation of people themselves. He posed that there is a rich and chequered history in the domain of communication. That reality is multi constructed and in these times and seeing is not believing.

After the address the vote of thanks was given by Dr. Anisur Rehman and the inaugural session ended.